


Brightest Day

by bette (ferns)



Category: Justice League of America's Vibe (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Autistic Character, Because I DO WHAT I WANT, Gen, Green Lantern!Dante, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, i'm squishing canons together and nobody can stop me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9566546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: Dante’s always been the most average out of the three of them, and they know it.Which meant that getting smacked in the face by a flying green ring came as a complete surprise.Or, the Green Lantern Dante Ramon AU that none of you asked for.





	

Dante’s always been the most average out of the three of them, and they know it.

Not science-oriented like Cisco, and there was something about numbers that just never-never _clicked_ for them. They didn’t match up with words and they didn’t add up right inside of Dante’s head the way that they did for Cisco. And even though Dante was more than a little bit interested in sports, especially soccer, but they couldn’t actually _play_ sports like Armando could. Had been able to. Or still could? Whatever. The only thing that Dante was good at was the piano. That was _it._ Pretty disappointing. 

Which meant that getting smacked in the face by a flying green ring came as a complete surprise.

“Ow!” Dante yelped, hands automatically flying up to clasp against their face. “What the hell-?”

The ring made a buzzing noise that could’ve been taken as reproving and kept floating in front of them. A flat mechanical voice floated out of… Well, Dante couldn’t actually see any sort of speaker, which meant that it must have been playing from somewhere else. They ignored the words coming out of the ring to instead try to figure out _how_ it was talking. And floating. And glowing green. Which were all things that rings didn’t typically do.

Said ring made an annoyed (no, not annoyed, that didn’t make _any_ sense, it was just buzzing-it was a _ring_ it didn’t have feelings or expressions or anything like emotion) buzzing sound. Dante glared at it and looked around. “Cisco?” They asked. “Are you there? Are _you_ doing this?”

The ring hummed and zoomed up to whap Dante’s nose, vibrating and flashing brighter and brighter green. _“Dante Ramon of Earth. You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps.”_

“Absolutely not,” Dante said flatly. “Nope. This is a joke-Cisco?” They swiveled on their heel and looked around. “Cisco, this isn’t funny. It’s just confusing.”

The ring buzzed again. _“Dante Ramon of Earth. You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps.”_

“Cisco, is this a joke about how much of a coward I am?” Dante couldn’t keep the hurt out of their voice. “It’s not funny.”

 _“Dante Ramon of Earth,”_ the ring repeated for a third time. _“You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps.”_

Distantly, Dante realized that people were starting to stare, so they grabbed the ring in between their hands like they were catching a butterfly. “Be quiet,” they muttered, pulling their hands against their chest. The ring buzzed in Dante’s hands like an angry hornet, but luckily it didn’t seem to have the stinging aspect. “Stop that!”

Dante ducked into an alley, crouching down behind a dumpster and opening their hands. The green ring zoomed up in the air to hover, reciting again, _“Dante Ramon of Earth. You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps.”_

“Listen,” Dante hissed, pointing at the ring, “I don’t know _what_ kind of weird joke this is, but I don’t want-”

The ring made a pleased _bzzt_ sound and shot forward, shoving itself onto Dante’s finger with a satisfied humming sound that reverberated throughout their bones.

“Hey!” Dante squawked indignantly, trying to shake the ring off of their finger. “What the hell- _whoa!”_

Dante’s vision flashed green, something heavy settling over their entire body. Something hugged itself to their face, and Dante blinked their eyes open in confusion, reaching up to pat at the weighted material that was now somehow molded to their face. It was moving _with_ their eyelids, like some sort of paint with the qualities of cloth.

Dante looked down at the ring on their pointer finger with the intent of pulling it off, but instead let out a shriek of surprise.

A flexible black… Fabric? of some kind covered Dante’s hand like a glove, spreading up almost to their elbow before abruptly turning bright green. As Dante craned their neck, they realized that the strange material (which was _glowing_ slightly, like they’d been dipped in radioactive waste) covered their entire body, form-fitting and heavy but still somehow light at the same time.

“No, no, get _off_ of me!” Dante yelped, pulling on the ring. As soon as it was off of their pointer finger, the… Whatever it was covering their body vanished, leaving them in the clothes that they had been in before. Dante stared down at the ring in their hand before looking up to see if anybody had noticed anything-someone _had_ to have seen a flash of light coming from behind a dumpster in a dirty alley, right?

Luckily, nobody seemed to have noticed; there weren’t a lot of people on the street, and all of them were too absorbed in their own business to realize that there was something weird happening nearby. The people here had pretty much gotten used to weird shit happening, something that Dante wasn’t usually grateful for.

They sure as hell were grateful for it now.

Dante poked the ring in the palm of their hand. “C’mon,” they muttered. “Let’s see what Cisco has to say about you.”

* * *

“No. Fucking. Way.” Cisco examined the ring, turning it over and over again in his calloused hands. “No _way,_ Dante, no fucking way.”

Dante crossed their arms and tapped their foot impatiently. “Are you going to tell me what it is or not?”

“It’s a _green lantern ring,_ Dante!” Cisco beamed up at them like Christmas had just come early for him. “They’re made by _aliens!_ I’ve always wanted to get a good look at one, but Hal is super protective of his and it’s really annoying. And that other Lantern, John, was kind of intimidating ‘cause he was in the _military_ , so I didn’t even think about asking him, and-”

“Slow down,” Dante interrupted. “You’re telling me that this-this _ring_ was made by aliens? And that’s why it came out of the sky and hit me in the face? And you _knew_ that these things existed and you didn’t warn me that they liked to hit people and get on their fingers and make them weird green costumes? You didn’t think that that was something I’d need to know?”

“No, I didn’t,” Cisco said excitedly, flapping his hands while keeping a firm grip on the ring to make sure he didn’t accidentally throw it, “because they _only choose certain people._ There’s, like, _requirements_ for it! Apparently there’s a whole rainbow of lanterns, which is pretty cool, but-” Cisco paused and took a second to run in a tight circle around Dante, who was more than a little used to that by now. “See, like, there’s the Blue Lanterns, and they harness the power of hope. And the Red Lanterns who harness the power of rage, and the _Green Lanterns_ who harness the power of-”

“Overcoming great fear?” Dante finished as they remembered what the ring had, uh, said as it was smacking into them, looking at the innocuously glowing ring in Cisco’s hand. They felt a tiny stirring in their stomach. This had to have been a mistake, there was no way that a ring that came from some _aliens_ (if Cisco were to be believed, that is, and Dante wasn’t sure that he was) had chosen _Dante_ of all people. It had to be a mistake of some kind.

Although it _was_ a nice thought to entertain, no matter how weird it was. That a potentially sentient ring had chosen them to be its host even though there were probably thousands of other people that were way more qualified than they were.

Cisco tilted his head to one side. “Kind of? Technically it’s about harnessing the power of will, but… A big part of that is overcoming fear.”

Dante pointed to the ring as Cisco set it reverently down on the table. “That’s what it kept saying as it hit me.” Dante tried to mimic the ring’s synthetic voice. “‘Dante Ramon of Earth, you have the ability to overcome great fear’.”

“I mean, you kind of do?” Cisco offered, shrugging. He looked just as baffled as Dante felt. “Remember that time in twelfth grade when that asshole was yelling at Melinda Torres and you punched him in the face even though he beat you into a pulp the week before?”

Dante flushed. “You don’t have to remind me of that,” they muttered. “Besides, it’s not like I was ‘overcoming fear’ or something like that, I just don’t like assholes who call my friends names because they can’t see past their own noses.”

Cisco raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, and what about that time you tried to beat up Heatwave-Mick Rory-even though his muscles are, like, the size of your head?”

“That was a stupid plan that let to me getting my hands frozen!” Dante argued. “It wasn’t ‘overcoming fear’.”

 _“Suuuuureee_ it wasn’t. You sound like Hal,” Cisco snickered, drawing out the word. He picked up the ring and tossed it to Dante, who caught it with only a little bit of frantic fumbling. “Face it, Dante. You’re Green Lantern material, even if you are a dick sometimes. A lot of the time.”

Dante crossed their arms. “Yeah, no. I don’t want to be a… What does a Green Lantern even _do,_ anyways? Do they get paid?”

“They’re like space cops, I guess? At least that’s how Hal explained it. He said they get assigned to sectors, but it’s pretty much always in the same sector as their home planet,” Cisco explained. “And there’s also this place called Oa that’s basically the headquarters of the lanterns. Hal showed me pictures of it with his ring-I bet yours has some too, from the last person who had it.”

“The last person who had it?” Dante looked down at the ring in their hand. “Someone else had this first? Why don’t they still have it?”

Cisco winced. “Because, they, uh, died. That’s how lantern rings get passed on-someone dies and then the ring seeks out a new wearer.”

Dante gaped at their brother for a second. “That’s normal to you?”

Cisco flailed his hands, gesturing to the entirety of STAR Labs. “Look around. We’re in a research facility that pretty much blew a hole in the city and is now being used as the headquarters of the Flash and Kid Flash, last year our big brother came back from the dead, I’m a metahuman who can see the past, present, and future, open portals to other worlds, shoot blasts out of my hands, and stop a speedster from running. _You_ got your hands frozen by a supervillain with a cold gun that _I_ made. Is someone dying and having their intergalactic police ring fly down to you and choose you _really_ that abnormal?”

Dante thought for a moment before saying decisively, “Yes.”

Cisco huffed and rolled his eyes. “Fine, maybe it’s weird to _you._ Have you put the ring on yet?”

“It put _itself_ on me.” Dante glared down at the ring. “It made this weird suit.”

Cisco beamed. “Put it on again, I wanna see! Hal’s suit looks different than John’s, I wanna see what yours looks like.”

Cisco, in Dante’s opinion, was _way_ too excited about this. All Dante wanted to do was get rid of the ring-they had no idea why it had chosen them, and all of this was probably some sort of huge mistake. If Dante _did_ end up as some sort of space cop or whatever it was that Green Lanterns did, there was no way that they wouldn’t get kicked out immediately by the first person who saw how incompetent they were.

Dante slid the ring onto their ring finger.

Just like before, the material spread over Dante’s body as their vision flickered green. Cisco smiled so widely he thought his face might split open. “You look _so cool.”_ He fumbled for his phone. “I’m gonna call Hal-John told us to let either of them know if any other lanterns came down to Earth for some reason, but John kind of scares me. And Hal and Barry are friends, so he probably won’t mind dropping by to see you.”

The ring on Dante’s finger hummed and they frowned. “What does it even _do,_ anyways?”

Cisco smiled, and Dante was pretty sure it wasn’t their imagination that Cisco looked just a little bit more sadistically gleeful than usual. “I can’t _wait_ to watch you find out.”


End file.
